Alien Anthropology – The Triamic

A Strange And Tragic People

The Triamic are not the first sapient race in the galaxy to go extinct. They are, however, one of the most recent, at least as far as is known to students of alien anthropology. Even more tragically, they were well on their way to becoming the first true galactic superpower, just before the collapse.

History

Having independently developed their own version of the Bergenholm field before they attempted their own diaspora, the Triamic exploded out of their home system almost overnight. As a pack-based society, they had already established the Hegemony in their home system, with a complex system of dominance and patronage that kept the myriad packs from each other’s throats. They had a highly sophisticated civilization, and when they made first contact with an alien race, the ekuz, they were actually the more technologically advanced of the two.

Many analysts and historians have said that when a more technologically advanced civilization meets a lesser, the lesser is inevitably absorbed or conquered. While there are plenty of examples of just that scenario playing out, there are also plenty of exceptions. The Triamic appeared to be an exception. They made contact, worked through the communication barrier, and attempted to develop trade relations. The Triamic might have been somewhat intimidating, due to the relatively monolithic nature of the Hegemony compared to other races, including the ekuz, but they were not interested in starting unnecessary wars, especially over interstellar distances. They were not pacifists; their ships were powerful and heavily armed. There were centuries of pack wars in their past. But they appeared uninterested in conquest.

Culture and Society

As time went on, the Triamic Hegemony continued to expand. At its height, the Hegemony encompassed some ninety-two systems, with another one hundred twenty-seven protectorates, mostly human, ekuz, and tehud worlds. It was the largest such interstellar organization known to alien anthropology at the time.

Accepted wisdom asserted that such an organization was unworkable. The distances were too great, the communications problems too insurmountable. But the Triamic made it work, apparently because of the way in which they went about it. The Hegemony did not operate by direct control. Communications delays would have made that impossible. Instead, there appeared to be something about the pack dynamics of Triamic society that meant that each Triamic functioned according to his or her place within the pack, and the pack’s place within the Hegemony. Triamic identity was closely bound to the pack, to the extent that without a pack, individual Triamic rarely survived.

Biology and Physical Appearance

The average Triamic stood nearly 2.5 meters tall. They were roughly humanoid, though with distinctly canine-appearing heads. Strict carnivores, they often brought entire herds of their homeworld’s prey animals along on colonization expeditions, and Triamic “terraforming” involved the introduction of their own native prey species onto a world. They never did appear to adopt domestication; they herded wild animals where they wanted to keep them, and then set them loose to be hunted.

The tragic fall of the Triamic Hegemony will be addressed in a later Galactic History post.